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Topic: Tired Yeast-Fact or Fiction (Read 529 times)

Apologies if this posts twice as I'm on a plane and it doesn't seem like my first post made it.

Anyway, I brewed a quad with some Westvleteren yeast I propagated from a bottle. It took the beer from 1.100 to 1.018 or about 12% ABV.

The other day I brewed a pale ale and could not find the US-05 I just bought so I tossed in the washed Westy yeast. No activity after 24 hours and I left for a trip and am now wondering how it is doing.

Which led me to is the thought of yeast being "tired" after a big brew fact or fiction? What say the forum?

And what do you think happened to my pale ale. Winner gets a beer.......

I would think there would more old, injured, less vigorous yeast after a high gravity ferment.

They don't like high levels of alcohol and they were living in a pretty high level alcohol environment.

They likely reproduced more due to the higher food availability and each cell is only able to reproduce a finite number of times.

The higher osmotic pressure they experienced when first introduced to the wort is hard on their systems and likely led to less overall health and vigor.

That being said, I think what happened to your pale ale is that it's just fine. probably a little slow to take off as the actual cell count was lower than ideal but when you return you will find it all happy happy and fermented.

My experience is that it's fact, but tired does not equal dead. It might work, and if it does, it might work more or less well. You may have a great pale ale, or it may be underattenuated and estery. I guess the question is "Are you feeling lucky?".

One more thing I'm psyched about with this brew is it's my SNPA recipe but with Simcoe for flavor instead of Cascade. So Perle, Simcoe, Cascade and I need to decide on a dry hop. Probably stay with Cascade so I can see how the Simcoe changes the recipe on it's own. Pretty pumped about this combined with the Westy comparison. Man I love brewing.....